


The Governor's First Decision

by Lenny9987



Series: Lenny's Imagine Claire and Jamie Prompts [65]
Category: Outlander (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-13 10:37:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18939220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lenny9987/pseuds/Lenny9987
Summary: Prompt: What if Dougal survived Culloden and also ended up in the Colonies? He never overheard Jamie and Claire talking that fateful day. Jamie didn't kill him.





	The Governor's First Decision

“One last bit of advice,” Quarry said as he oversaw the removal of his trunks from the governor’s office. “Once a week, I take a meal with one of two prisoners. The others follow their lead and I find it helps to keep order. They air their grievances and if it’s nothing too drastic and something can be done, it helps maintain the relatively peaceful status quo.”

“Who are the two prisoners? And why two?” Lord John asked, his brow pinched between his eyes as he fought the surprise and disgust he felt over Quarry’s suggestion. 

“At first it was just one—Dougal Mackenzie. He was brother to the Mackenzie clan’s laird so the prisoners followed him rather naturally. He’s been here… well, it was long before my time,” Quarry reminisced, sighing and leaning toward the door frame before straightening to a more appropriately military posture—he wasn’t through with his post quite yet. “Then about a year or so past, we got Red Jamie as a prisoner—Jamie Fraser.”

Lord John felt the blood drain from his head and surge to his limbs, urging action though what action specifically, he wasn’t sure. 

“He’d managed to hide for some years and perhaps that achievement is what earned him the loyalty of the men. Though, I’d also heard that he was nephew to Dougal and that the chief of the Mackenzies had actually favored Fraser to follow him as chief over his brother—which would naturally create some tension between the two men,” Quarry added with an amused chuckle, but then he blinked and shook his head. “Clearly I’ve been here too long. To understand the politics of the clans… I’ve been here too long,” he repeated. 

“So you alternate meals with each?” Lord John sought to draw Quarry back to the original point.

“Hmm? Oh, yes. One joins me the first week, and the other the second. They share my table—both wear irons, of course, and there’s a guard just outside—can’t be too careful. Over dinner we have our conversation, and after there might be a game of chess—if you’re dining with Fraser. He’s a good head for the game. Decent conversationalist too. If it were a matter of personal preference, I would have taken all the meals with Fraser. But, it’s about appearances and it’s more effective if it switches between the two. Keeps the prisoners focused on that break between the uncle and his nephew. It’s yet to turn to outright hostility, but better to have them watching one another over their shoulders than risk them turning their attention at the guards. They outnumber us significantly and even with guns, it would be foolish not to take precautions.”

Lord John nodded and thanked Quarry, turning to look out the window to the prisoners gathered in the yard rather than watch his predecessor leave. 

He spotted Fraser immediately. Even in his unclean state with his hair matted and dulled, its ruddy hue was distinctive—to say nothing of the way he carried himself and the way the men reacted to him when they were around him. Lord John remembered some of it from that humiliating encounter before Prestonpans. Jamie Fraser exuded an authority that men respected. Lord John felt a stab of jealousy at the realization. He turned his attention to trying to locate the man that must be Dougal Mackenzie. 

As with Fraser, he turned out to be easy to spot. Men were clustered around him too but in a different way. There was loyalty there, as with Fraser, and certainly authority… but from the way the men watched Mackenzie, it wasn’t born of the same respect—or in some cases, perhaps, any. 

Fraser and Mackenzie were both large, imposing men (even in their reduced state—and these were the men who occasionally shared better meals than the others, Lord John noted). But Mackenzie seemed to tower over the others in a way that wasn’t paternal so much as… intimidating. Fraser held himself straight and tall… but in a non-threatening way. It was clear he had the strength and skill to be dangerous but also that he didn’t purposely put it on display. Mackenzie… Lord John watched as Dougal Mackenzie gestured and mimed with his shackled hands. There was a violence to his movements that seemed a promise eager to escape so it could exact itself. 

Lord John swallowed, his stomach beginning to twist. 

He had to meet with those two men and the choice of which to meet with first wasn’t one to be made lightly. It would send a message—to the two men themselves, to the other prisoners, and to the guards and soldiers under his command. 

He hated Fraser and the prospect of being in the same room with him… He continued to watch the two men. 

Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.

“Corporal,” he called to the man standing waiting just outside his door. “Have the prisoner James Fraser fetched here. I understand he had an arrangement with Quarry and wish to discuss it with him.”

“Right away, Sir,” the man saluted and hurried away. 

Lord John turned back to the scene in the yard, watching and waiting to see how his decision would be taken—watching and waiting to see if his first decision as governor of Ardsmuir prison had been a mistake. 


End file.
